Life Backwards’ is break for homeless

Cambridge Evening News, September 23, 2006

HOMELESS people are being employed as extras in a TV film of Alexander Masters’ award-winning bestseller Stuart: A Life Backwards.

BBC2 and US Television network HBO have teamed up with executive producer Sam Mendes for the small screen adaptation of the biography, which is based on the true story of an unusual friendship between a homeless man and a writer.

The film, which describes the life of Stuart Shorter, an alcoholic with a violent past, is being shot in Cambridge, where he lived, and some of the city’s homeless people have been given parts.

They are being paid £50 a day for appearing in the production, which stars Tom Hardy as Stuart Shorter and Benedict Cumberbatch as Alexander Masters.

A spokeswoman for Neal Street Productions which is making the film, said: “Some of the extras in the film playing friends and associates of Stuart are real homeless people from the Cambridge area, and I understand a couple of them did know Stuart.

“The production team liased with several Cambridge charities and outreach programmes in order to find them. “

The film tells the story of how Stuart meets writer and charity worker Alexander and strikes up an unusual friendship.

As Alexander learns more about Stuart’s complicated life and traumatic childhood, he asks if he can write his story and Stuart advises him to tell the story backwards, so it is “more exciting – like a Tom Clancy murder mystery”.

As their remarkable alliance develops, Stuart gradually recounts his life story in reverse, telling of post office raids, attempts at suicide and spells inside numerous institutions.

The crew are filming in Cambridge for two weeks – locations included the homeless commune Emmaus and Drummer Street Bus Station.

Alexander, who wrote the screenplay, and Stuart’s family are on hand throughout the filming to offer helop and advice.

He said: “I am delighted.  It’s just glorious and wonderful that filming has started.  Stuart would have approved.  It’s just a shame that he’s not around.”

Producer Pippa Harris added: “Alexander’s script preserves the book’s brilliant, anarchic quality.  It’s a story told backwards, a biopic of an unknown man which mixes humour and terrible tragedy: it breaks all the rules.  We’ve also been lucky enough to have both Alexander and Stuart’s family on hand to advise our leads – an extraordinary situation and one which brings an extra dimension to the film.”

Filming will finish in early October and the film will be shown on BBC2 next year.

In 2005, the book Stuart: A Life Backwards was nominated for the BBC 4 Samuel Johynson Prize for Non-fiction and short-listed for the Whitbread Book of the Year Award (Biography Category) and the British Book Awards: Biography of the Year.

Cambridge Evening News, September 23, 2006